Worldly performance by Franklin DECA members

Wednesday

The Franklin High School juniors and members of Franklin’s DECA club placed fourth at DECA’s International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Atlanta in April. Their project focused on making location scouting for films more accessible to the general public.

Location scouting “has not been opened to the independent creator,” Kavishwar said. He said their project “was a way of decentralizing and making (the location scouting) market available to anyone.”

Their project, called Scoutis, “dramatically reduces the price of location scouting to under 1 percent of the current price, targeting those independent creators who have been priced out of the current industry,” Kavishwar wrote in an email. “Currently, location scouting requires a three-person team, equipment and a great deal of logistics; our platform removes all those barriers, requiring only one person and a phone (camera).”

Included in their project was a 30-page business plan detailing various aspects including funding, which they presented to judges at the competition. It was similar to the work entrepreneurs do in the TV show “Shark Tank.”

DECA is a nonprofit organization that helps high school and college students develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills through projects and presentations. It offers both competitive and noncompetitive events for students.

Saripalli joined Franklin’s DECA club last year through a recommendation by a teacher and enjoyed his experience. Kavishwar joined the club this year. The school has about 50 students in its DECA club.

While events such as the ICDC are big, they are a far cry from the work the boys usually do in the club.

“Most of the time we’re working on our projects, planning it out, getting feedback,” Kavishwar said. “Right now, we’re working on fundraising” as a way to help pay for the trip the club made to Georgia and along with the DECA State Career Conference held in Boston in April.

While the trip wasn't completely work related - the boys befriended students from Dighton-Rehoboth High School and toured the Coca-Cola factory - it also helped provide valuable insight into creating strong entrepreneurial skills and how to create a good business plan.

“The main thing we learned throughout the project was that it’s important to recognize what value a company is providing to the marketplace that others haven’t added,” Saripalli said. “Knowing your customer base is important but knowing what your product does for them is more important.”

“The confidence we received from continually placing high was supportive to our feelings of ‘these are ideas are right,’” Kavishwar said in response to advancing through competitions.

While hard work was put into their project, the boys also wanted to show that it was possible to do well without having to sacrifice their entire work schedule.

“We didn’t spend all our time on this," said Saripalli, who added that they spent part of their free time in Georgia studying for their AP exams. "This can be something you enjoy on the side and that you don’t have to be a member of one of these larger schools with a larger program to do well in a competition.”

Their success has been noticed by others.

“A lot of our friends see our success and are thinking about (joining) the club next year,” Kavishwar said. “Hopefully, the size of our club will grow as a result.”